Academic literature on the topic 'Indian epic poetry'
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Journal articles on the topic "Indian epic poetry"
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Barth, Vinicius. "CONTEMPLAÇÃO NAS SOMBRAS: O GUESA DE SOUSÂNDRADE E A MEIA-NOITE ÀS MARGENS DO SOLIMÕES." Revista Épicas 8, no. 2020 (December 30, 2020): 119–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.47044/2527-080x.2020v8.119137.
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This article aims to analyze the episode that narrates the Guesa's midnight dream on the banks of the Solimões River, a passage that is present in the first book of Joaquim de Sousândrade's pan-Indian epic O Guesa. This part, which anticipates the epic topic of the “descent into hell” that occurs during the Dance of Tatuturema in the second book, shows some of the literary influences over the poet's voice in formal and thematic aspects. This study will try to identify, through the poetic text, some of these influences, quite varied and assembling aspects of epic poetry - classical, renaissance and modern - of lyric and of romantic and Indianist literature, culminating in an object of singular value within Brazilian poetry. Guesa, a Muisca Indian, personification of the Sun-god and representative of the pan-Indian project of Sousândrade, undergoes a metamorphosis at midnight: he resembles Lucifer and Prometheus, and sings his melancholy just like Baudelaire on the banks of the mythical Lethe.
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Smith, John D. "Winged words revisited: diction and meaning in Indian epic." Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 62, no. 2 (June 1999): 267–305. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0041977x00016712.
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Scholars working in the field of oral epic all have a particular form of words committed to memory—Milman Parry's celebrated definition of the formula. The definition in fact appears in two slightly differing forms in Parry's writing. In 1928 he wrote, ‘In the diction of bardic poetry, the formula can be defined as an expression regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express an essential idea’ (Parry, 1971: 13). Two years later came the more familiar version: ‘The formula in the Homeric poems may be defined as a group of words which is regularly employed under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea’ (Parry, 1971: 272). The differences between the two forms of the definition are negligible, and Parry made no further attempt to refine or modify it during the five years of life that remained to him. For Albert Lord, too, the definition was clearly adequate as it stood: in ch. iii of The singer of tales he simply quotes it verbatim (Lord, 1960: 30), and proceeds directly to a consideration of the function of formulaic diction.
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Raksamani, Kusuma. "The Validity of the Rasa Literary Concept: An Approach to the Didactic Tale of PHRA Chaisurjya." MANUSYA 9, no. 3 (2006): 67–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/26659077-00903004.
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The rasa (emotive aesthetics), one of the major theories of Sanskrit literary criticism, has been expounded and evaluated in many scholarly studies by Indian and other Sanskritists. Some of them maintain that since the rasa deals with the universalized human emotions, it has validity not only for Indian but for other literatures as well. The rasa can be applied to any kind of emotive poetry such as lyric, epic, drama and satire. However, in Thai literature an emotive definition of poetry encompasses a great variety of works. A question is then raised in this paper about whether the rasa can be applied to a Thai poem of didactic nature. Phra Chaisuriya, a versified tale by Sunthon Phu, is selected as an example of study.
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Lesik, Ksenia A. "The Motif of Journey in Kunwar Narain’s Poetry." Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies 12, no. 4 (2020): 521–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.21638/spbu13.2020.404.
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The article is focused on the motif of a journey in the works of a modern Indian poet, Kunwar Narain, a representative of New Hindi poetry. This motif of a journey is extremely important in Indology studies. Starting with the Indian epic poems “Mahabharata” and “Ramayana”, the motif of pilgrimage has been one of the significant plot lines. During the Medieval period, the motif of a journey became an allegory of individuality cognition. In modern Hindi literature writers introduce innovation in the image of travel, remaining within the established Indian tradition. The research in this article is based on the bilingual collection of poems by Kunwar Narain “No other world”. The article argues that a journey becomes the leitmotif in the poet’s lyrics. As a result, the Indian poet writes a kind of a travel literature, which is based on the image of the way with two semantic motives: a journey as a hero’s movement in space and a hero’s search for his essence, including a peculiar path as an allegory of his spiritual formation. The article focuses on the compositional distribution of poems in the “Journey” section of the book. This distribution expresses the movement of the author’s thoughts. The analysis of the literary techniques, symbolic images and allusions was conducted in the frames of not only Indian literature, but also American poet Walt Whitman’s creations, which had a great influence on Kunwar Narain’s lyrics. Literary influences are identified that contributed to the formation of the Indian poet’s worldview.
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Mahore, Nisha. "PAINTING MENTIONS IN ANCIENT INDIAN TEXTS." International Journal of Research -GRANTHAALAYAH 7, no. 11 (November 30, 2019): 54–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.29121/granthaalayah.v7.i11.2019.984.
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Engish : In ancient Indian texts, the rules related to painting are mentioned in detail, in which texts of poetry, drama, epic, Puranas, Upanishads and various disciplines describe their popularity in ancient tradition and cultural methods of Indian painting and public opinion. Apart from this, there are some texts in which free and comprehensive painting has been explained in detail. For example, there are 269 chapters in this book composed by Vishnudharmottara Purana Markandeya. Under which, in the third section, Sanskrit subjects are especially important for the fine arts. In which chapters 1 to 118 are told about art. In this book, nine chapters from 35 to 43 are of Chitrasutra. It is very popular and most notable and well-known. In which detailed information related to the painting is given, which is not found in any other book before it.In the same way, in the epic, Ramayana, Mahabharata, there is a description of paintings on chitrashalas, palaces, chariots and the great dramatist Bhasa has described the paintings in his three plays Swapnavasavadattam, Pratigya Yogandharayana and Dutavakya. Apart from this, painting has also been mentioned in texts like Abhilachirtartha Chintamani, Mansar, Samranga Sutradhar.It is only through these ancient Indian texts that the painter has been able to study the artifacts microscopically. That is, following the rules related to the picture in these texts can be seen in miniature paintings of Ajanta, Mughal, Rajasthan. By following these rules, painters have been able to express their artistry by imbibing expressions like harmony, balance and cooperation, effectiveness in their artworks. The example of which can be seen in the artwork made by Bengal school and artists of Calcutta.
Hindi : प्राचीन भारतीय ग्रन्थों में चित्रकला से सम्बन्धित नियमों का उल्लेख विस्तृत रूप से मिलता है जिसमें काव्य, नाटक, महाकाव्य, पुराण, उपनिषद् व विभिन्न विषयों के ग्रन्थों द्वारा भारतीय चित्र लेखन की प्राचीन परम्परा व सांस्कृतिक विधियों एवं जनमानस में उनकी लोकप्रियता का वर्णन मिलता है। इसके अतिरिक्त कुछ ऐसे ग्रन्थ भी हैं, जिनमें स्वतन्त्र व व्यापक रूप से चित्रकला की व्याख्या विस्तार रूप से की गयी है। उदाहरण स्वरूप विष्णुधर्मोत्तर पुराण मार्कण्डेय द्वारा रचित इस ग्रन्थ में 269 अध्याय हैं। जिसके अन्तर्गत तीसरे खण्ड में संस्कृत विषयों में विशेषकर ललित कलाओं के लिये सर्वाधिक महत्वपूर्ण हैं। जिसमें अध्याय 1 से लेकर 118 तक कला के बारे में बताया गया है। इसी ग्रन्थ में 35 से 43 तक नौ अध्याय चित्रसूत्र के हैं। यह बहुत चर्चित व सर्वाधिक उल्लेखनीय एवं बहुचर्चित हैं। जिसमें चित्रकला से सम्बन्धित विस्तृत जानकारी दी गयी है, जो इससे पहले अन्य किसी ग्रन्थ में नहीं मिलती।
इसी तरह से महाकाव्य, रामायण, महाभारत में चित्रशालाओं, महलों, रथों पर चित्रकारी का वर्णन मिलता है व महान नाटकार भास ने अपने तीन नाटकों स्वप्नवासवदत्तम्, प्रतिज्ञा योगंधरायण तथा दूतवाक्य में चित्रों के बारे में बताया है। इसके अलावा अभिलषितार्थ चिन्तामणि, मानसार, समरांगण सूत्रधार जैसे ग्रन्थों में भी चित्रकला का उल्लेख किया गया है।
इन प्राचीन भारतीय ग्रन्थों के माध्यम से ही आज चित्रकार कलाकृतियों का अध्ययन सूक्ष्मरूप से करने में सक्षम हो सका है। अर्थात् इन ग्रन्थों में चित्र से सम्बन्धित नियमों का पालन अजन्ता, मुगल, राजस्थान के लघु चित्रों में देखा जा सकता है। इन नियमों का पालन करते हुये ही चित्रकार अपनी कलाकृतियों में सामंजस्य, सन्तुलन व सहयोग, प्रभाविता जैसे भावों को आत्मसात करते हुये अपनी कलाकृति को अभिव्यक्त कर पाने में समर्थ हो सके हैं। जिसका उदाहरण बंगाल स्कूल व कलकत्ता के कलाकारों द्वारा बनायी कलाकृतियों में देखा जा सकता है।
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Reichl, Karl. "The search for origins." Journal of Historical Pragmatics 4, no. 2 (June 6, 2003): 249–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jhp.4.2.06rei.
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Although in some traditions (notably in India) oral epics are performed as part of a religious ritual, there is no overt ritual function of the epic in most oral traditions known today. However, even in a purely secular and seemingly non-ritual context, the performance of oral epics can have ritual dimensions. This is discussed with reference to the oral epic poetry of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia. It is argued that the performance of oral epics is a particular type of communicative event, of which the comparatively rigid act sequence can be seen as being on a par with the patterning of ritual. A second important aspect linking epic performance to ritual is that both events are meaningful in a similar way. It can be shown that in the performance of heroic epics tribal and cultural origins are explored and that hence the primary function of epic is not entertainment but the search for ethnic and cultural identity.
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Plourde, Éric. "Kalevala through Translation: Continuity, Rewriting and Appropriation of an Epic." Langue, traduction et mondialisation : interactions d’hier, interactions d’aujourd’hui 51, no. 4 (December 11, 2006): 794–805. http://dx.doi.org/10.7202/014343ar.
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Abstract The Kalevala, the national epic of the Finnish people, published in the 19th century and created by E. Lönnrot from songs collected in the Karelian countryside (Northwestern Russia), is the result of a long process of rewriting. This process has manifested itself through successive retranslations in various languages and through certain strategies favored by the epic’s translators. Recent translations reflect a tendency to appropriate the epic through the use of a vocabulary and poetic style that are specific to the culture of the translator. For example, verse translations in Tamil are structured in the manner of folk epics of Southern India; while in the French verse translation the translator has made abundant use of archaisms and neologisms.
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van der Woude, Joanne. "Indians and Antiquity: Subversive Classicism in Early New England Poetry." New England Quarterly 90, no. 3 (September 2017): 418–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/tneq_a_00626.
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Two exceptional colonial poems, Thomas Morton's version of the events around his Maypole at Merrymount and Benjamin Tompson's epics on King Philip's War, are heavily classical, especially in their descriptions of Native Americans. The essay examines the advantages that the use of classical comparisons have over the more common tropes of Biblical typology.
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НАЗАРОВ, НАЗАРІЙ А. "Індоєвропейські витоки обрядовості слов’янського епосу." Studia Slavica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 64, no. 1 (June 2019): 117–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1556/060.2019.64110.
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Was there a goddess Slava in Slavic pagan antiquity? Though there have been voices that it was possible, the analysis of Slavic folklore texts proved the issue to be more complex. The present paper shows that Ukrainian folklore as well as the folklore of other Slavic peoples may have preserved stable compositional clichés that can be traced back to Indo-European prototypes. In their turn, these clichés may be explained as the verbal reflections of ritual practices and sacred etiquette. It is stated that the final parts of Ukrainian dumas, Russian bylinas, and Serbian heroic songs that contain praise (slava) of natural forces can be regarded as remnants of pagan beliefs with strongly proved Indo-European background. The common motives of slava in different Slavic epic traditions give us important insights into the Slavic pagan religion. At the end of dumas, bylinas, and South Slavic heroic songs, there is a distinct part in which the singer, apart from the main story, blesses the audience and the universe. This part had preserved the composition scheme comparable to that of Old Indian stuti hymns, Pindaric, and Vedic poetry: 1) an invocation to the deity or a person with higher social rank; 2) a recounting of the previous (semi)mythological precedent; 3) a request. The obligatory lexical element of the final part of Slavic eposes is slava. As it is mentioned in the context of mourning over the dead or calming the natural forces, it is very likely that the concept was connected to the cult of ancestors and natural forces - one of the most archaic forms of religion. It is proved by two non-neighbouring cognate folklore sources. In Hutsul funerals up to the beginning of the 20th century, slava used to serve as a taboo name of the soul of the deceased. Meanwhile, at least up to 19th century, the Serbs preserved the holiday of slava that is interwoven with the cult of the dead (e.g., kolyvo was eaten during the rite). Thus, though we cannot claim the existence of the personified goddess named Slava, we have strong evidence about the notion of slava (praise, fame) that could have been current in Common Slavic religion. It is even more likely due to the underlying Indo-European tradition, in which the notion of fame was not personified though crucial for the ideology of warring elites (like in Pindar's lyric). Such evasive notion of slava that was not always personified though praised comforts very well to the picture of ancient Slavic religion handed down to us by Procopius of Caesarea. He claimed that ancient Slavs praised natural forces, rivers, and forests. Likewise, in the fragments preserved in some of Ukrainian dumas and songs from Kirsha Danilov's collection, the praise (slava) was sung not only to the heroes but also to rivers and fields.
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Cruz, Gabriela. "Laughing at History: the third act of Meyerbeer' L'Africaine." Cambridge Opera Journal 11, no. 1 (March 1999): 31–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954586700005516.
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A mythical giant, a Malagasy slave, a song, an accomplished baritone, an outraged critic; these seemingly incompatible figures are bound together in the Paris premiere of Giacomo Meyerbeer's L'Africaine in 1865. They are the fundamental elements of my story of the opera's third act, a narrative web binding together early modern nautical history, epic poetry, grand-opera dramaturgy, and the nineteenth-century politics of operatic performance and listening in an exploration of how the opera's rather fictionalised account of Vasco da Gama's first sea voyage to India five centuries ago bears witness to the strength of the historicist project in grand opera.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Indian epic poetry"
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Romero, Anaya Jesus. "Individualidad de la "Historia de la nueva Mexico", de Gaspar de Villagra, en el contexto de la epica indiana." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1993. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/186119.
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The Historia de la Nueva Mexico, by Gaspar Perez de Villagra, has been one of the less studied epic poems in Hispanic American literary criticism. The purpose of this study is to show the text's literary characteristics and justify its inclusion within the tradition of Ariosto's romanzi, which was earlier followed by La Araucana, paradigm of the epic discourse in Hispanic America. The analysis borrows from a structuralist-narratologic methodology developed in the works of Gerard Genette, Felix Martinez Bonatti, Cedomil Goic and Julia Kristeva. The study begins with the analysis of the different definitions of 'epic genre' from Aristotle and Horatio to the twentieth century and the theories of Genette about architextuality. Once establishing the definitions, the study proceeds to differentiate between the two generic variants: the romance and the epic. The purpose here is to show that the principles of textual disposition applied by epic authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Hispanic America belong to the romance, and this gives the discourse a very distinct structural physiognomy. A comparative analysis of some of the best known epic poems in Hispanic America show their structural singularity, as well as their inclusion within Ariosto's tradition. The texts analyzed are: Arauco domado, Peregrino indiano, Puren indomito, Argentina y Conquista del Rio de la Plata, La Christiada, and Bernardo. In Chapter Four the study centers on the transtextual relationships established between La Araucana and Villagra's poem, which determine the individuality of the Historia de la Nueva Mexico and its inclusion within the Hispanic American literary canon. The poem's uniqueness is based on its peculiar narrative structure, the hypertextual relationship it maintains with the Ercillan paradigm, as well as the juxtaposition of codes that determine an intertextual space. This space is the aesthetic image of ideological tensions in the narrator's perspective. It is the tensions which place both the narrator and the text within the ideological and artistic parameters of the Baroque period.
Books on the topic "Indian epic poetry"
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Epic of the dispossessed: Derek Walcott's Omeros. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
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Bhavan, Bharatiya Vidya, ed. British death march under Asiatic impulse: Epic of Anglo-Indian tragedy in Afghanistan. Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 2003.
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Sarma, M. V. Rama. Milton and the Indian epic tradition: A study of Paradise lost, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1995.
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Raja Nal and the Goddess: The north Indian epic Dhola in performance. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press, 2004.
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The Tübingen Tulu manuscript: Two South Indian oral epics collected in the 19th century. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015.
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Henriksen, Line. Ambition and anxiety: Ezra Pound's Cantos and Derek Walcott's Omeros as twentieth-century epics. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.
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Ambition and anxiety: Ezra Pound's Cantos and Derek Walcott's Omeros as twentieth-century epics. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.
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Narayan, Rasipuram Krishnaswamy. The Ramayana: A shortened modern prose version of the Indian epic (suggested by the Tamil version of Kamban). New York: Penguin Books, 2006.
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Narayan, Rasipuram Krishnaswamy. The Ramayana. New York: Penguin Group USA, Inc., 2008.
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In the shadows of divine perfection: Derek Walcott's Omeros. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Find full textBook chapters on the topic "Indian epic poetry"
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Jarow, E. H. Rick. "The Cloud’s Way." In The Cloud of Longing, 77–91. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197566633.003.0007.
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This chapter follows the imagined journey of the Cloud through varied landscapes of India. The phenomenon of “diversion,” also seen in the epic Mahābhārata, is examined as an associative organizing principle of narrative in which one scenario suggests another (as opposed to linear progression). The arc of the journey is examined through close readings of particular verses that describe fabled sites in India’s mythic geography. These are unpacked and analyzed for their exquisite figurative detail. The repeated stops with mountains and dalliances with rivers are shown to be part of Kālidāsa’s eroticized landscape, and comparisons are made with well-known landscape narratives. The actual poetic figures that the poet employs, and how they work, are examined.
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Harris, Jonathan Gil. "Hi Mho Ji Kudd." In Geographies of Embodiment in Early Modern England, 39–63. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198852742.003.0003.
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Harris tells the story of Father Thomas Stephens, whose interactions with the landscape, language, and food of India refashioned his English body. By unpacking the phrase ‘hi mho ji kudd’, a Konkani translation of ‘hoc est corpus meum’ (which is inscribed beneath the altar in a Jesuit church in Goa), Harris provides an account of a more worldly transformation than that offered by the Eucharist. As the author of the epic poem Kristapurana (Story of Christ), Stephens participated in the ‘Jesuit tradition of inculturation’. And yet, Stephens’s love of the Marathi language ‘Indianized’ not only the Christianity he preached but also his own body. Stephens’s poetic use of the kalpataru, the coconut tree, as Eden’s Tree of Life, invokes a daily experience of interacting with Goan coconuts, underscoring the recalibration of Stephens’s flesh ‘into something Indian’.
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Khandkar, Arundhati C., and Ashok C. Khandkar. "Know Thyself." In Swimming Upstream, 152–64. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199495153.003.0007.
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Having won acclaim with his receiving India’s highest literary honour, the Sahitya Academy Award, he set his sights on encouraging Dalit writers and thinkers to express themselves in their own words, helping them find their own authentic voices, without regard to the vast literature that was essentially canonical and brahminical in origin. He hoped that this would help heal the wounds that the Untouchables felt deeply as a result of the deprivations that they had experienced for generations. At the same time, he also pointed to the varied and opposing interpretations of stories and parables from the great Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata. His distillation of the vast span of Vedic and Vedantic literature offered depth and meaning extending from the ancient Sanskrit to the contemporary nascent Dalit literature. Marathi Dalit literature blossomed during this time and saw extraordinary growth. He expanded his analysis and thinking into other creative realms including the aesthetics of art, poetry, and drama.
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Robertson, Ritchie. "3. Classical art and world literature." In Goethe: A Very Short Introduction, 45–64. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780199689255.003.0003.
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‘Classical art and world literature’ shows that Goethe’s knowledge of art and literature was wide-ranging and explains that, in both, he came to believe that the works produced by the ancient Greeks formed a standard that could never be surpassed. In art, he explored the classical tradition that descended via the Renaissance to the neoclassicism of the 18th century. In literature, his taste was much wider. He read easily in French, Italian, English, Latin, and Greek, and in his later life he eagerly read translations of Asian texts—novels from China, epics and plays from India, and the Arabic and Persian poetry that would inspire his great lyrical collection, the West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan).
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Figueiredo, João R. "Luís de Camões’s The Lusiads and the paradoxes of expansion." In Local antiquities, local identities, 190–208. Manchester University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9781526117045.003.0010.
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Following a well-known trend in early-modern Europe, the Portuguese poet Luís de Camões widely refashioned the myth of Lusus, an obscure son of Bacchus mentioned by Pliny, with two main purposes: to explain the etymology of the words "Lusitania" (the former Roman province used as a synonym for Portugal) and "Lusíadas" (the descendants of Lusus and the title of epic poem, published in 1572); and to set in motion the narrative framework of Vasco da Gama's voyage to India, insofar Bacchus, the mythical ancestor of the Portuguese and former conqueror of India, fiercely opposes the king of Portugal's expansionist plans. To address such questions, Camões vies with Ovid and Pliny, two basic tenets of the classical revival in early-modern Europe, in creating a bigger-than-life metamorphosis: the Giant Adamastor, turned into stone at the nethermost tip of Africa, whose autobiography is the etiology of the Cape of Good Hope.
Conference papers on the topic "Indian epic poetry"
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Hock, Hans Henrich. "Foreigners, Brahmins, Poets, or What? The Sociolinguistics of the Sanskrit “Renaissance”." In GLOCAL Conference on Asian Linguistic Anthropology 2019. The GLOCAL Unit, SOAS University of London, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.47298/cala2019.2-3.
Full textAbstract:
A puzzle in the sociolinguistic history of Sanskrit is that texts with authenticated dates first appear in the 2nd century CE, after five centuries of exclusively Prakrit inscriptions. Various hypotheses have tried to account for this fact. Senart (1886) proposed that Sanskrit gained wider currency through Buddhists and Jains. Franke (1902) claimed that Sanskrit died out in India and was artificially reintroduced. Lévi (1902) argued for usurpation of Sanskrit by the Kshatrapas, foreign rulers who employed brahmins in administrative positions. Pisani (1955) instead viewed the “Sanskrit Renaissance” as the brahmins’ attempt to combat these foreign invaders. Ostler (2005) attributed the victory of Sanskrit to its ‘cultivated, self-conscious charm’; his acknowledgment of prior Sanskrit use by brahmins and kshatriyas suggests that he did not consider the victory a sudden event. The hypothesis that the early-CE public appearance of Sanskrit was a sudden event is revived by Pollock (1996, 2006). He argues that Sanskrit was originally confined to ‘sacerdotal’ contexts; that it never was a natural spoken language, as shown by its inability to communicate childhood experiences; and that ‘the epigraphic record (thin though admittedly it is) suggests … that [tribal chiefs] help[ed] create’ a new political civilization, the “Sanskrit Cosmopolis”, ‘by employing Sanskrit in a hitherto unprecedented way’. Crucial in his argument is the claim that kāvya literature was a foundational characteristic of this new civilization and that kāvya has no significant antecedents. I show that Pollock’s arguments are problematic. He ignores evidence for a continuous non-sacerdotal use of Sanskrit, as in the epics and fables. The employment of nursery words like tāta ‘daddy’/tata ‘sonny’ (also used as general terms of endearment), or ambā/ambikā ‘mommy; mother’ attest to Sanskrit’s ability to communicate childhood experiences. Kāvya, the foundation of Pollock’s “Sanskrit Cosmopolis”, has antecedents in earlier Sanskrit (and Pali). Most important, Pollock fails to show how his powerful political-poetic kāvya tradition could have arisen ex nihilo. To produce their poetry, the poets would have had to draw on a living, spoken language with all its different uses, and that language must have been current in a larger linguistic community beyond the poets, whether that community was restricted to brahmins (as commonly assumed) or also included kshatriyas (as suggested by Ostler). I conclude by considering implications for the “Sanskritization” of Southeast Asia and the possible parallel of modern “Indian English” literature.